THE MELT Contact: Jane Wesman Images of a Disappearing Landscape 212-620-4080 x11 By Diane Tuft [email protected] Foreword by , Ph.D. or Publisher: Assouline Felicia Sinusas Publication Date: April 2017 212-620-4080 x14 Price: $95.00 // ISBN: 9781614285861 [email protected]

“Few things have more stark beauty than the meltwater, icebergs, , and glaciers, as you can see in the stunning images that Tuft has captured for this new book.” –Joe Romm, Ph.D. from the Foreword to THE ARCTIC MELT

“Readers may walk away with not just photographic representations of landscapes but also the ethereal experience of being there — or as close as many of us ever will get.” –Los Angeles Times review of Diane Tuftʼs Gondwana: Images of an Ancient Land

Artist, Activist, Photographer Diane Tuft Documents the Beauty – and Fragility – of Earthʼs Northernmost Regions in Exquisite New Photography Book, THE ARCTIC MELT

The Arctic is melting faster than any other place in the world. “I felt compelled to photograph its splendor before the effects of global warming cause this landscape to disappear,” explains Diane Tuft in her remarkable new book, THE ARCTIC MELT: Images of a Disappearing Landscape (Assouline, April 2017).

Driven by her desire to create a comprehensive picture of the fragility of this region, Tuft traveled by plane, boat, and helicopter to the mountain glaciers of Norway, the Arctic Oceanʼs sea ice, and the icebergs and ice sheet of Greenland during the summers of 2015 and 2016. The resulting photographs are a testament to the beauty and vulnerability of the planetʼs northernmost regions.

The images in THE ARCTIC MELT immediately elicit wonder and awe. Vast glaciers, icebergs, and frigid seas are regal in shades of blue, black, and white. Reddish-brown sandstone ice is austere and abstracted. Although there are no people in these photographs, the effects of human-produced climate change are visible. This creates a tension between More THE ARCTIC MELT/Page Two beauty and harsh reality, a hallmark of Tuftʼs work. “While this was an amazing experience, it disturbed me to know that my trip through the Arctic Ocean was only possible because of the Arctic melt,” she says. “For thousands of years, the sea ice during the Arctic winters through the month of June was always too thick for surface vessels to access the . But now, because of climate change, our vessel was the third earliest to ever reach the Pole and the only vessel to arrive during the summer solstice.”

Tuft has composed a series of haikus which enhance her impressions of the region, such as this excerpt: endless white vista icebergs dancing in oceans snow embraces trees

glaciers rise and fall fragile moments transforming water messages

THE ARCTIC MELT also features a Foreword by Joe Romm, Ph.D., founding editor of Climate Progress. He writes, “It is vital to tell this story because the most important ice on the planet is far away from where most people live so they can not see what is happening to it firsthand. It is important because it is not too late to save most of that ice and because failing to do so would destroy civilization as we have come to know it.”

With THE ARCTIC MELT, Diane Tuft makes a forceful case about the hazards of global warming by capturing the Arcticʼs haunting beauty through her camera. # # # About Diane Tuft and Joe Romm, Ph.D. Diane Tuft is a mixed-media artist who has focused on photography since 1998. She has had solo exhibitions at the Marlborough Gallery and others in , the Kimball Art Center, the Bruce Museum, and the Southampton Center. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the International Center of Photography, and the Parrish Art Museum as well as numerous private collections. She is the author of two previous publications - Unseen: Beyond the Visible Spectrum and Gondwana: Images of an Ancient Land. Tuft is based in New York City. For more information, visit www.dianetuft.com

Joe Romm, Ph.D. is the chief science advisor for National Geographic Channelʼs “Years of Living Dangerously and the founding editor of Climate Progress. He is author of nine books, including Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know. A senior Fellow at American Progress, he holds a Ph.D. from MIT.